From the putrid muck sprouted a single flower—and that was all. The Weeping Hearth, where the Saint of the Single Flower once defeated the Evil God, was nothing but mud and the lone blossom. Massive walls encompassed the westernmost point of the Howling Vilelands—location of the Evil God’s resting place known as the Weeping Hearth. Erected by one of the fiend commanders, Cargikk, the bulwarks of unhewn rock formed two concentric circles. The radius of the outer ring was about three kilometers, while that of the inner stretched some five hundred meters. Despite their crude construction, they were larger and more solid than any defensive fortification that could be found in the human realms. The area commonly called the Weeping Hearth actually referred to the small, solid red-black zone within the inner wall. Toxins oozing from the Evil God’s body had seeped deep into the ground there. Without so much as a single blade of grass or any animal life, the dead land sprinkled with rocks made for a barren vista. In that place, there was only sludge and a single flower. “Aaadlet…” An unsettling mass of sediment about the size of a horse’s stable lay atop the lifeless earth. It squelched and writhed as if in terrible pain, black as coal, tinged with bloody crimson. Red tentacle-like limbs protruded from within. The five-meter-long appendages reached out, seemingly searching for something, but then, as if resigned, returned to the mud. “Freeemy…Rolooonia…” Near the center of the fetid mound was a pair of large lips that would rise to the surface, disappear, then emerge again, only to withdraw once more. The red, full, womanly lips wailed in a hoarse, feminine voice. The uncanny timbre, laced with hatred and bloodlust, called out the names of the Braves. “Goldooof…Chaaaamo…Aaadlet…Haaans…Mooora…Chaaamo…Freeemy…Nashetaaania…” The mud writhed and droned on and on in that hate-filled voice. This was the Evil God—the worst calamity ever to befall the human race, and progenitor of fiends. Every few minutes, the muck would give birth to a strange creature. Each was about the size of a kitten, and no two looked exactly the same. One was a snake with innumerable eyes scattered across its body; another had the appearance of a monkey in the upper half, and that of a winged insect in the lower. Then came a dog with no legs or tail—just a head and a torso. After, a praying mantis with a head and nothing else. Some of them, like the seven monkeys’ arms fused together, didn’t even seem to be living creatures. The eerie organisms emerged from the corruption to wriggle, flounder, and squirm as if in existential despair for having been born so repulsive.
Following these births, the red tentacles would immediately snatch the eerie creatures, throttle them, and then return the deceased to their squalid beginnings. Birthing only to kill, murdering only to give life. The Evil God continued its meaningless cycle without end. The thing imparted no sense of dignity, none of the beauty that wicked things possess, and none of the nobility begotten by a prolonged existence. Its form was ugly and foul and pitifully small. Barnah, the Brave of the Six Flowers who had fought the Evil God seven hundred years in the past, had described it as “so wretched it inspires despair.” Beside the Evil God bloomed a single flower—so small it could comfortably fit in a child’s palm. Its six petals, pale purple, were not steeped in the Evil God’s toxin. Softly, gently, as if nestling close to the abomination, the blossom sprouted from the ground. It was said the Saint of the Single Flower had planted it here a thousand years ago. But the true nature of this flower was not recorded in any documents or records. None aside from the Saint of the Single Flower knew if it had any power at all. Three times humanity had fought the Evil God and defeated it. The first battle had been one thousand years ago, when the Saint of the Single Flower had sealed the deadly being in the Weeping Hearth. The second battle had been seven hundred years ago. The Braves of the Six Flowers had kept Archfiend Zophrair in check while Heroic King Folmar and Bowmaster Barnah fought the Evil God. Their enemy had retaliated with its tentacles and toxins. Amid the suffocating stench, Folmar’s sword sliced the sordid lump into pieces while Barnah’s fiery arrow burned it. After an hour-long battle, the Evil God raised a hair-raising shriek and fell still. The third battle had been three hundred years ago. More than a thousand fiends had flooded into the Weeping Hearth as the second generation of Braves charged the Evil God. With Marlie, the Saint of Blades, and Hayuha, the Saint of Time, holding enemy forces at bay, Merlania, the Saint of Thunder, activated a hieroformic gem. She had spent the past thirty years charging it purely for the sake of taking down the Evil God. Scores of lightning bolts streamed from the heavens, incinerating their quarry, and once more it became still. The legends say that both times the Evil God fell, the Crests of the Six Flowers had shone brightly, and at the same time, all of the fiends had stopped in place and wailed at the sky. The grief-stricken moans of the fiends traveled far, beyond even the borders of the Howling Vilelands. According to the tales, although the Six Braves had only moments earlier been fighting for their lives, when they saw the fiends contorted in grief, they felt pity for their foes. And even when the surviving Braves departed the Howling Vilelands, the keening never ceased. According to what some say, once the fight was over, the crest of each Brave began gradually fading, and after about six months they had disappeared entirely. One of the Braves who had returned alive, Marlie, the Saint of Blades, had an analysis of their nemesis to share: The Evil God was the master of the fiends but did not give them any particular orders, and likewise, the fiends did not look to it for direction. The Evil God most likely lacked a conscious mind. If it did possess one, it was equal to that of an animal or even less. Nothing more than a manifestation of pure hate for humanity, with no purpose beyond wishing their death and destruction. On the other hand, it was not unusual for fiends to be sentient. Some of them were even smarter than humans. The commanders giving orders to the rank and file belonged to that class of cognizance. The monsters’ allegiance to the Evil God was absolute. To a human it would be unthinkable to so fully serve a thing with no conscious will, but fiends were different. They devoted everything to their service of the Evil God and lived only to grant its desires. Marlie wrote that loyalty to the Evil God was the meaning of the fiends’ existence, and without it they could not be. Marlie, the Saint of Blades was generally correct—with one exception. One fiend did possess its own will, its own ambitions, and lived not for the Evil God but for itself. Its name was Dozzu. Around two centuries ago, it had left the Howling Vilelands for the realms of man. Over the course of two hundred years, it had laid its plans, making the preparations necessary to fulfill its ambitions before eventually returning to the Howling Vilelands. Close by Dozzu’s side was the fiend’s one and only comrade, a girl it had personally nurtured: Nashetania.
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